I think you were trying to make the status depend only on what was
before the first "&&". You can certainly do

But isn't that exactly what I did do? Appending to you code below:

first-statement && {
any-old-stuff
} || {something-else-entirely}

Yet the return value of any-old-stuff (egrep in practice) was what
actually controlled something-else-entirely. I'm not expecting the
pipes within any braced structure to make any difference. Is that
what's happening? Is so, how/why? Do not the braces pointedly force
the entire structure to be subordinate to the first '&&'? It seems to
me that the left>right association in my original code is sorta
'brutally' adhered to in such a way that the natural meaning of the
braces is violated such that any-old-stuff has control of branching when
the natural logic is that first-statement has it. Yes? No?